Bill Gates buys Arizona land — hilarity, or tragedy, ensues

The big news this week in metropolitan Phoenix is that Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment purchased an $80 million stake in desert land to the west of town. Boosters are excited because powerful development interests hope to turn this 24,000 acres into 80,000 houses, pushing sprawl farther into the pristine and threatened Sonoran Desert.

Unless BillG plans to turn the land into a preserve, he might want to know a few things that the locals didn’t tell him. (And to put my cards on the table, I am a fourth-generation Arizonan, former columnist for the Phoenix newspaper, and continue to write, pro bono, a blog on Arizona history and issues).